A new project by Ford Mobility in London is using data gathered from
just 160 vehicles to help reduce congestion, improve safety, enhance
logistical efficiency and even cut emissions. Now it is planning to
export the solution to the rest of Europe while also increasing the
| SMART DATA
Annual Showcase 2020 | Intertraffic World 085
volume of data input, for even more dramatic results
Words | Jack Roper
Nine million inhabitants
and a sprawling road
network made London
the perfect city for Ford‘s
analysts prove their worth
How can the coming tsunami of
connected vehicle data be harnessed
and channeled to solve the mobility
challenges facing cities, making their
roads safer? Ford Mobility has addressed this
question with an extensive two-year study in
London, Western Europe’s largest city with nine
million inhabitants. Using smart algorithms to
correlate granular vehicle data from a connected
fleet with readily available public datasets, Ford
has demonstrated the capacity of data analytics
to help implement London’s bold transportation
agenda in five key areas: road safety hotspots,
electric vehicle infrastructure, traffic retiming,
mode-shift analytics and reassessing traffic
metrics. The company will take the insights
glimpsed in the study to other European cities,
while eyeing a brave new world of data-driven
solutions built on cloud-based platforms
common to all smart city participants.
“We aimed to establish the power of vehicle
data and provide actionable solutions to cities,
rather than just a holistic idea that data is the
future,” says Ford project lead Jonathan Scott.
“We decided to address policy intentions when
London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, issued his
Transport Strategy in 2017.”
Data collection
Alongside ambitious environmental and
congestion targets, this strategy included
a Vision Zero commitment to eliminate
all road fatalities by 2041.
“That prompted us to ask: How do you
get there?” Scott continues. “If you’re forever
reacting to accidents you will never achieve
Vision Zero, and the Safe Systems approach
requires infrastructure that is tolerant of
human imperfections. By combining historic
accident data and real-time vehicle data to